Believe it or not the World Series of Poker is less than two weeks away. Even if you’re not a poker player you will still feel poker excitement all over town throughout June and part of July.

While there will be plenty of poker action at the host hotel--The Rio Las Vegas--there will be more players than normal at all of your large poker rooms on the Strip. There will even be a few more players heading Downtown's poker rooms.

Most of the big poker action is on The Strip but you can still find competitive games in two or three Downtown Vegas casinos. We say two or three because not everyone considers the electronic poker tables at Plaza a viable option.

What is it like to be a professional poker player in Las Vegas? What it is like to make your living on the felt, doing battle with tourists and locals alike, fighting and clawing for fiercely contested chips in pot after pot, suffering through the bad beats, basking in the glow of making your opponents fold their superior hands, raking in the spoils of your victories, shrugging off the hands that got away, then racking up your soldiers and doing it all again the next day?

Tim "The Trooper" Watts (the nickname is a reference to one of his favorite Iron Maiden songs) knows exactly what it's like.

Since moving to Las Vegas from Jacksonville, Florida last June, Watts has been living the life that many poker players from all over the world have only fantasized about. It is in the poker rooms up and down the Strip where Watts goes about the business of grinding out his living by playing a card game.

Although he did line-up a part time job at a restaurant when he first came to town, Watts recently took a leap of faith and said goodbye to the day job so that he could concentrate fully on poker.

Now with no bosses to answer to and no schedules to follow, each day is an open book. Whether his office is Caesars Palace, the Venetian, or perhaps downtown at the Golden Nugget, Watts enters each day in full control of his own destiny.

Outside of "open" bars or plunking yourself down in the casino for a while, buffets are the last bastion for unlimited booze. Over the last few years, though, there's usually been an up-charge attached to that.

Christmas will be coming a bit early for poker players at the Venetian next month. Beginning May 1, the Strip's largest poker room will begin offering a $2 max rake on all poker games 24 hours a day through May 24. The normal rake at Venetian is a $4 maximum.

To the uninitiated, the rake is, basically, how poker rooms make money. Because poker players do battle with each other instead of against the house, the poker room takes a percentage of the money in each pot. In most poker rooms, the rake is 10% of the pot up to a certain amount and it is taken in $1 increments. The first dollar is taken out when the pot reaches $10, the next dollar is taken out at $20, and so on until the maximum rake is reached. The $2 maximum rake at Venetian is a 50% drop from what they usually take and players will see a nice increase in their bottom line because of it.

On December 5, Derek Stevens, owner of The D and Golden Gate casinos in downtown Vegas, placed a $20,000 wager on the Michigan State Spartans to win the NCAA Basketball Championship at 50-1 odds. He placed the bet at the Golden Nugget. As March Madness comes to an end, Stevens stands to score one million if Michigan State can win their last two games.

On Saturday, April 4, Michigan State will play Duke at 3 p.m. (PT) in the first, national semifinal game. If the Spartans win, they will take on the winner of Kentucky vs. Wisconsin who play later that evening. The final game is scheduled for Monday, April 6 in Indianapolis.

IGT has partnered with the Golden Nugget to launch the first video poker interstate jackpot pool in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. SuperTimes Pay Poker Mega Progressive jackpots are similar to the large payouts you find in Megabucks and Wheel of Fortune slot machines.

The SuperTimes Pay Poker Mega Progressive jackpot (say that three times fast) is available in 3 play video poker machines in quarter and dollar denominations. SuperTimes Pay Poker machines often start with nickel denomination so make sure you’re playing the correct amount if you’re chasing the big money.

After promising to be back in February and failing, Defending the Caveman is finally laying its spear down in Downtown Vegas. The one-man show lost its home at Harrah's in January on the cusp of its four-year anniversary at the Strip hotel.

It hasn’t even been a year since the Golden Nuggetimproved their 24Kplayers club. Well, the Nugget is at it again. This time the updates to its players club are more noticable.

The 24K Club used to be one single tier for everyone, but now has four tiers. Tiers start with 24 Karat and move up to Premier, Chairman and the top level of Elite which is earned once you reach 100,000 tier points. You can only earn points when gambling like most locals casinos. The benefits are also similar to other casino players clubs aimed at locals. (You can see the full list, here).

Five years after the Golden Nugget added the Rush Tower to their downtown room offerings, the hotel has turned its attention to upgrading some of its other accommodations. The mid-tier Gold Tower recently received a renovation that would make its big brother, Rush, proud. Our 2012 stay in a Gold room was found to be similar in layout to entry-level Carson rooms, but more than cozy enough.

Gold Tower renovations have discarded the floral curtain patterns and introduced a Rush-like, chocolate-toned scheme to distinguish itself itself even more from the Carson rooms. The new Gold rooms still feature upgraded pillow-top mattresses, feather down comforters, upgraded linens, goose down pillows and 42-inch plasma TVs. Gone are two gold corner chairs, replaced by an L-shaped chocolate leather couch, with white footstool.

There was no refrigerator in our room, but a familiar Keurig machine was on the desk with a four-pack of K-cups available to purchase for $10. Two 16.9-ounce water bottles were also available at $4 a piece.